3 Using visual clues
In this section, you will meet Mohammed. One of the significant advantages that watching a video clip offers you is visual support. You will practise using this to support your listening in the next activities.

Activity 6
Watch the clip of Mohammed with the sound turned off. Use the speaker icon at the bottom of the screen to mute the sound.
Choose the correct word or phrase to complete the following sentences.
1 Mohammed est
2 Mohammed a
3 Mohammed travaille comme
4 Mohammed vend
5 Mohammed travaille
Mohammed est originaire
7 La fille aînée de Mohammed a
8 La fille cadette de Mohammed a
9 Mohammed
Activity 7
Make a list of the visual clues that you used to complete the sentences in Activity 7.
Answer
- At the beginning of the clip, we see Mohammed with his arm around a young woman of about his age; the couple are with two children. The woman is of European heritage, so it seems unlikely that she is a family relative of Mohammed.
- The children in the picture with Mohammed and his wife are both girls. The same two girls are seen again later in the extract.
- We see Mohammed selling items to customers.
- We see olives and other related products on Mohammed’s stall.
- We see Mohammed working in an open-air market.
- Mohammed is of North-African appearance; the products he sells are associated with North-African cooking; the items we can see in the background when Mohammed is at home appear to be North-African.
- We can guess at the girls’ ages from their physical appearance – children rather than babies or adolescents.
- We can guess at the girls’ ages from their physical appearance – children rather than babies or adolescents.
- Mohammed smiles a lot while he is working and his general body language is very positive.
OpenLearn - Intermediate French: Understanding spoken French
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.

